


we can do better than that

by safflowerseason



Series: a miracle would happen [1]
Category: Veep (TV)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safflowerseason/pseuds/safflowerseason
Summary: Amy resigns. Dan comes over to gloat, and gets an idea. Missing moment between 4.05 and 4.06.





	we can do better than that

think of what’s great about me and you

think of the bullshit we’ve both been through

think of what’s past, because we can do better

\- the last five years

 

* * *

The morning after the convention, Dan wakes up, kicks out Erica or Lindsey or whatever the fuck her name is, showers, and immediately heads over to Amy’s apartment. She’s been back in DC for five hours, he’s waited long enough.

“Ugh.” Amy says flatly the minute she opens the door. “Why are you here?”

“Really, Amy, if you were going to quit you could have had the decency to inform me ahead of time.”

He breezes past her into the apartment. Amy rolls her eyes and slams the door behind him. “You know, _polite_ people wait to be invited inside.”

“Dan Egan, have we met?” 

It’s a steamy day already, and Amy’s got two fans going in the hallway, but it’s only marginally cooler in here than it is outside. Dan’s already grinning in smug anticipation of their reunion but his smile stretches even wider when he sees what Amy’s wearing: plaid boxer shorts and a Penn State tank-top. He’s eighty percent sure she’s not wearing a bra.

Amy gives him a dangerous look that suggests he shouldn’t comment on her attire. “ _What_?” she snaps. 

“Amy,” Dan knows he’s smirking all over, but he can’t help it. The news of her resignation, once he got over the shock, is the absolute best thing he’s heard in a while. “You’ve been holding out on me. Spill.”

For a moment Amy looks like she’s going to argue with him, but then she gives up and leans back against the door, looking grim. 

“I didn’t know I was going to quit.” she growls. “It was…a spontaneous decision.”

“You mean you finally cracked.” Dan replies delightedly, savoring her evident rage. “You couldn’t handle the incompetence for one more single second. It was driving you up the fucking wall.”

“ _Fuck_ Karen Collins and her equivocating bullshit.” Amy mutters darkly.  On the grounds that she was his White House access, Dan had dragged Amy out for drinks a few more times since May. She had spent most of those hours bitching to him about Karen Collins. Dan had spent most of them trying to get her to talk about something else other than Karen Collins. Karen Collins was useless to him.

“Look at this way: at least you took Karen down with you. And it will not look good for Selina, bleeding high-level staffers as she heads into the general. You only lasted only a few months longer than I did, after all.” 

“You were fired.” Amy corrects him with relish. “I resigned.” 

“Hey, I _technically_ resigned.” The memory still riles him. He heads into the kitchen and starts opening the cabinets, most of which are empty. “So, alcohol? You look like you need it. I want to hear _all_ the juicy details. Tell me what Gary’s face looked like when you insulted his lady love.”

For a moment he thinks she hasn’t followed him, but when he turns around, she’s leaning against the counter-top, running her fingers distractedly through her hair, and clearly not listening to him. “I _quit,_ Dan. I’ve never quit _anything_. I’ve been with Selina for _years._ I wasted years of my life on that woman, and I couldn’t even make it to the fucking general election.” 

He doesn’t quite like the bleakness in her tone. “It wasn’t a waste. Look at how much joy I’ve brought you since Selina reunited us.”

Amy snorts, but it comes out sounding kind of hysterical. Dan squints at her. “Have you slept yet? Or eaten?”

“Mike keeps texting me to ask for advice, I think he’s already forgotten I don’t work with him anymore…and now _you’re_ here, inexplicably…I suppose your homing beacon for locating vulnerable women went off.”

In the end Dan orders them lunch and they wind up on her bed watching tv and drinking beer because that’s the only room where the air conditioner really works (“Hey Ames, now that you’re unemployed you can actually try and make this place livable!” “If you don’t like it you can leave, _Danteeksi_.”). Of course, they have to argue for fifteen minutes first about what channel to watch. Dan initially proposes they watch regular tv, but Amy insists that she wants the post-convention coverage. Then Dan says she’s got a special type of schadenfreude that only affects people who’ve been fired, and Amy screams that she _wasn’t fired, you colossal fuckhole._ Then she throws the remote at his head. He only relents because she looks like she might break in two at any moment. 

Anyway, there are worse ways to pass a summer afternoon than drinking and yelling obscenities at CNN with Amy. 

The media is basically having one giant orgasm over Tom James, and Selina’s got a bump in the polls that’s probably making Kent dance, or at least express a human emotion. If Dan ever felt nostalgic, which he obviously _never_ does, he might miss the crazy high you get on campaigns when things go right. This would be one of those moments. 

He glances surreptitiously over at Amy and she’s got this grotesque look on her face, like she wishes she were there too but is completely aware of how fucked up that desire is. 

“Whose idea was Tom James?” Dan asks, even though he already knows. That kind of brainwave could have only come from Amy, or Ben on a good day. 

“Mine. But of course she didn’t listen until after I walked out on her.”

“Well…at least she got him.”

“Yeah, at the cost of my political career.”

There’s still way too much tension in her body for Dan’s taste—it’s extreme even for Amy’s usual standards—so even though the talking heads won’t shut up about Tom James, he changes the topic to O’Brien, and they spend the next hour lazily theorizing whether or not having Montez as his VP will actually persuade Hispanic voters that O’Brien doesn’t want to deport them all. 

Amy finally passes out, thanks to food and alcohol, one arm flung over her head all dramatic, and her mouth slightly open. She’s so deeply asleep that her chest is barely moving up and down. It’s like she’s hibernating. Dan wonders when she last got a night of full sleep.

He doesn’t leave right away. There’s a PKM thing tonight but it’s not until eight, and it’s barely three o’clock now. So it’s not like he has to rush out the door. Plus, it’s kind of nice in Amy’s room. It’s the only one in the apartment that looks like an actual human lives here. There’s a trail of high heels leading into the small walk-in closet, an open suitcase on the floor with clothes spilling out of it, and piles of books and papers everywhere. It kind of smells like her too, the sweet, peppery scent of her perfume hanging in the air. 

An hour later, Dan jerks out of a doze and nearly falls off the bed in panic grabbing for his phone. But the same talking head is still on CNN, the light in the bedroom is the same. The only thing that’s changed is Amy—she’s turned on her side and her arm is now flung out to her right, her fingers a few inches from his chest.

He can’t believe he actually fell asleep in a girl’s bed unintentionally. That’s rookie-level shit, and Dan Egan is no rookie. 

Suddenly everything about his presence in this room seems weird, even though it wasn’t weird at all when both of them were awake and fighting around the tv. For one thing, although he’s seen Amy sleep before, he’s never been _in_ _her room_ while she does it. He doesn’t remember ever being here while they “dated” (Dan doesn’t _exactly_ consider Amy a woman he dated, because he dates women explicitly for work purposes, and those three dates with Amy, no matter how he had originally intended them, had disturbingly not felt like work). Amy had been almost comically unwise during that whole thing, but she had at least kept him away from her bedroom. 

More to the point, he doesn’t think they’ve ever been wearing so few clothes around each other since they dated or whatever the fuck it was they did. He’s in a t-shirt and workout shorts, and Amy’s basically in her pajamas, boxers slung temptingly low on her hips. There’s just…so much of her to look at. She’s definitely _not_ wearing a bra. 

 _What the fuck?_ He’s all for Amy wanting _him,_ that’s just common sense, it’s something he can use, and it’s not like he doesn’t _know_ how much she likes his touch (it’s _so_ obvious). And yeah, Amy’s gorgeous and while they were working together he’d definitely fantasized about throwing her on his desk and fucking her until she forgot how to form words or whatever but that was partly because she was just _there_ in his face all the time (he’d made sure he was in her face all the time). It’s never been a feeling he couldn’t put aside in order to live his actual life. 

But now he’s in here, in her apartment, and instead of thinking about the PKM event tonight, he’s wondering what would happen if he blew it off and just stayed here in Amy’s bed with her.

It would be so easy, dangerously easy, to roll her gently onto her back and press a kiss right into that little dip by her hip bone. Kiss his way up her abdomen in order to wake her. Get his hand under her shorts. 

Tomorrow’s Sunday. They could stay here all weekend. 

 _Jesus fucking Christ._ Dan gets up and moves to the living room. It doesn’t smell like Amy in there.

But he still doesn’t leave, in case Amy wakes up and decides to do something stupid like beg Selina to take her back. She should be jumping for fucking joy she got out before Selina’s administration implodes, which it almost surely will, and instead she’s in some kind of manic rage-mourning. Dan’s not even going to try to understand it, but it’s pretty clear she needs supervision. The press isn’t really talking about her resignation—Mike hasn’t released an official statement yet, because a fucking sloth works faster than Mike McLintock—but they will, and it’s probably not going to be good.

So he…stays. Watches tv in the living room and orders in more food because Amy’ll eventually wake up and need to eat again. And, obviously, he goes through all the briefing books on her coffee table and in her bedroom in order to pick up some useful information for work. 

It’s not the worst afternoon he’s ever had.

Miraculously, Amy’s still sleeping when he has to leave, and even though he could just slip out the front door without saying goodbye, he…doesn’t do that, and instead goes into Amy’s bedroom. (It would be _rude,_ otherwise, okay?) Her bedroom is bathed in cool shadows now, blurring the contours of her face. Dan sits down at the edge of the bed and touches her on the arm. She stirs, eyelids flickering open. 

“Mmm?” She doesn’t look at all surprised or upset that he’s still in her apartment, which Dan takes to mean that she’s still mostly asleep.

“Hey, I have a work thing. See you later?”

“Okay.” She’s already falling back asleep. As her body relaxes again, she does this unconscious nestling thing against his thigh, sighing a little. It’s simultaneously erotic and adorable. Dan practically bolts for the front door.

He doesn’t feel like himself until he gets to the PKM event. Thanks to Selina’s triumph at the convention his stock with Sidney is even higher, so he gets to spend the entire night being chatted up by mining CEO’s and big-ag execs, the major clients that Sidney hasn’t let him touch before. Finally, _finally,_ this is why he got into lobbying (uh, besides the money), and it feels fucking fantastic to actually be effective, to feel like he’s a force for something again. 

The brainwave arrives while he’s busy charming a forty-year old woman who owns a quarter of the soybean industry. He’ll bring _Amy_ on as a lobbyist for PKM. Sidney will be so fucking pleased, and if Tom James actually manages to contain Selina’s usual shit-show and she wins the election, Dan and Amy would be such a hot commodity on the lobbying circuit. Dan Egan will _officially_ be back on top, like he’s always planned. 

And _yeah,_ Amy’s definitely going to hate it, but as usual her actual opinion on the matter is of minor concern. And even if she does hate it, they’ll have fun together like they always do. Dan loves lobbying for the money and the connections, but it’s still a lighter version of the power games he got used to playing on the Hill and in the White House, so having Amy around will definitely liven things up. 

Besides, there’s no way he’s going to let Amy Brookheimer, with her own brand of political genius, go work for someone else. She’s going to be head-hunted in three seconds flat. No, no, he _needs_ her with him.

(Even better, this plan explains all those weirdly Amy-specific fantasies he was having earlier. Those were all just symptomatic of the importance of not letting her work for someone else _.)_

Dan’s feeling so good about his life that as the event’s wrapping up, he finds Lindsay-Erica-whoever and spins her some sob-story about _feelings_ , which she eats right up and then eagerly invites him back to her place. It’s risk-free because he’s just scheduled a breakfast meeting with the owner of an oil pipeline who’s only in town until tomorrow afternoon. 

After that he’ll go see Amy and convince her to come work with him, which should take only half an hour, tops, and then they can go to brunch or something while he preps her on PKM, which will take all day, naturally, and then he can bring her to work on Monday and it’s all so perfect he can’t believe he didn’t think of it the moment she resigned. 

* * *

“Why are you wearing a fucking suit on a Sunday morning? Oh God, don’t tell me you came straight from some girl’s apartment. At least disinfect yourself before you come inside.” 

“Good morning to you too, sunshine.” 

Much to his chagrin, Amy’s wearing a bra this time, although the rest of the outfit’s the same (tanktop, boxers, wet hair). But she looks a little better than she did yesterday. Still tired, still tense, but the wild look in her eyes is gone, so he will accept yesterday as a successful first step in his plan.

“Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?”

Amy wrinkles her nose. “Are you really going to be here that long?” but she turns toward her kitchen anyway. Dan trails her in there, dumping his bag on the dining room table and admiring the view from behind. 

“You look happy.” she comments dryly, pouring him some coffee as he leans against the counter. “I’m assuming the weekly virgin sacrifice went well?” 

“I had a meeting this morning with Jim Donnelly.” He deliberately mentions the name, but Amy doesn’t seem particularly impressed, just tips her water glass to him in a little salute. “Big oil, that’s gotta mean they finally like you over there in Satan’s den.” 

“Oh, they can’t get enough of me.” As he raises his mug to his lips, he catches the tilt of Amy’s head: her eyes linger on the cut of his shoulders (he’s in one of the new suits today), an expression like interest flaring briefly in her face. Something in his bloodstream starts zinging around like he’s been hit with an electric charge. 

“Did the meeting go well?” Her eyes are back on his, firmly.

“It was fine.” He spent the entire hour name-dropping everyone in the Meyer Administration and it fucking worked, he had Donnelly eating out of the palm of his hand by the end of the meeting. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” she admits grudgingly, and he laughs, because only Amy would complain about actually getting _more_ rest. “Did you put something in my drink? I feel like I’ve been roofied. I don’t even remember when I fell asleep.”

“No, Sleeping Beauty, that’s just what it feels like to actually sleep. Besides, I don’t need anything extra to get into _your_ bed.” He favors her with his most caressing smile, and maybe she’s still out of it because she doesn’t have a retort ready, she just kind of glances down into her water and then peeks back up at him underneath her eyelashes. God, this is the _best_ morning. 

Still, as much as he would love to spend the entire day making Amy blush in her kitchen, he came to her with a very specific purpose in mind. “I have a proposal for you, Ms. Brookheimer.”

She squints at him suspiciously. “Is this the reason why all my old briefing books were all over the living room this morning?”

He waves that away. “No, this is much more important.” 

“Oh boy.” she says warily, and puts her water aside so she can fold her arms and put on her most skeptical expression. In response, Dan angles himself more firmly into her space, so she has to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. 

“Amy,” he begins, and sees her swallow. “Would you…do me the honor…of coming to work with me at PKM?”

He can tell she wasn’t expecting that, because her eyes immediately widen in blank surprise. “What?”

“Come lobby with me.”

“Are you for real?”

“Why wouldn’t I be for real? If I were one to self-promote, which I am, I would say this is a brilliant idea.” 

“Lobbying is for people like you who only care about money and ruining shit.”

“Now, now.” he pulls a face of mock-disapproval. “Be nice. Sometimes I lobby—excuse me, _consult—_ for things that the American electorate really needs. Like zucchini.”

“I never saw myself in lobbying.” she replies, more doubtfully. 

“Because you’re so morally pure? Yeah, that’s not going to work on me.”

“ _Because_ , unlike you, I actually prefer to _do_ things, not network for a living.” 

“Think how much fun we’ll have.” Dan wheedles her, in his most cajoling tone. “Take a break from campaigns and opposition research and develop some semblance of a life outside the White House.”

Amy actually winces when he mentions the White House, and he swears her body strings up tight before his eyes. Fuck, that was _not_ the right thing to say. To course-correct he hastily blurts out the absolute first thing that comes into his head: “Come on, Ames. I _missed_ you, I missed working with you.”

Amy gives him a truly poisonous look; he might have just spit at her. Immediately she retreats for the kitchen door. “In what dimension did you think I would _ever_ fall for that?” she hisses. “I resigned, I didn’t fall on my head.” 

Dan follows her out to the living room, which is even messier than it was yesterday thanks to his presence. The tv is on, but muted, and Amy’s phone is on the coffee table, lighting up approximately every three seconds. 

“Uh, your phone’s going off.”

“So?” Amy snaps, curling into the one spot on the couch that’s not covered in old briefing memos.

“Who’s been contacting you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t checked it since yesterday morning.”

“ _You_ haven’t checked your phone?” He snatches it up and sure enough, she’s got almost 400 email notifications alone. Even from scanning her lock screen he recognizes the names of at least twenty Senators and Congressmen, plus emails from other major lobbying firms. Shit, he needs to lock this down. He’s already started planning his official comeback party.

“Well, I’ve been _here,_ Dan, and it’s not like any of those are actually _from_ the White House.” she says, and there’s something raw in her voice that the exhaustion of yesterday had concealed. Dan has never preoccupied himself too much with Amy’s feeling, but even he can hear the hurt there.

“Except for the ones from Mike,” he replies, in a gentler tone, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t smile, just gazes blankly at the tv, which is showing Selina and Tom boarding Air Force One. Dan can see her face shuttering down through the curtain of her hair. Fuck. He _hates_ this version of Amy.

After a few seconds of watching her watch the tv, he tosses her phone back on the coffee table, shoves aside a bunch of policy books and flops down right next to her on the couch, basically trapping her by the arm rest. Amy recoils at once and scowls fiercely. 

“What the _fuck_ , Dan, get away—“

“Look,” he interrupts her, loudly. “I’ll be honest with you.” He can’t help but smirk as he says it though, and, miraculously, it pulls a real laugh out of Amy. “It’d be a huge deal for me if I brought you to _our_ firm. If I get you, it would only generate more interest in _me_. And you know, _you know_ we work well together, Ames. We could wield a lot of influence.” 

She looks at him evenly for a moment and then says “You could have just started with that, you know. Your consistent self-interest is the only part of you that’s actually reliable.”

“So you know I’m serious about _this_. Besides, it’s not like you can’t go back into politics later. And consulting’s not hard.”

“That’s true, if you can do it.” Dan’s way too relieved to hear the mocking note in her voice, but he doesn’t dwell on it. One more well-aimed argument and he’s got her. 

So he plays his trump card, the one that worked so well before. “I told you we could be great, Amy. Whether we’re inside or outside the White House. I wasn’t fucking around when I said it.” 

Amy immediately rolls her eyes, but he sees it in the split-second beforehand—that flash in her eyes she only gets around him, when she’s intrigued and wants to play. He wants to punch the air: she’s his. 

“I’ll think about it.” she says. “If you promise to stop saying cheesy shit like that. It’s embarrassing for both of us.” 

“Fair enough. I’ll tell Sidney we’ll meet him tomorrow at 9am.” 

“ _Tomorrow?!_ ”

“It’s just a meeting, Ames, _relax._ Anyway, you need to get the fuck out of this apartment.” 

“Ugh, fine. Set it up.” 

He’s already composing the email. “Wanna get brunch, or something?” 

“Don’t you have some hapless intern to woo?”

“I take Sundays off. Besides, I need to prep you for the meeting.” 

She pulls a face. “It’s Sidney Purcell, not _Meet the Press._ ”

“Okay, pro tip: I strongly suggest that you don’t tell him that tomorrow.”

Amy reaches for her phone. “Let me just check my messages first.”

Dan lunges and grabs it up just before she does. No need for her to read all the other offers before he’s finished fully talking up PKM. “You can check it later. Go get changed.”

Amy swipes ineffectually at his arm. “ _Dan.”_

 _“_ Unless you want to wear that outfit, which, by all means, feel free to do so.”

He smiles at her, lets his eyes linger where the neckline of her tank-top gapes slightly over her chest. Normally there’s no point wasting these moves on Amy, but he’d legitimately caught her checking him out earlier, so _something’s_ changed. And she really is irresistible like this, messy and loose and _close_. 

Amy lets out an unimpressed noise and pushes herself off the couch. “Sidney better offer me a fuck-ton of money to put up with you.”

But she throws him a little playful look over her shoulder as she leaves, an almost coy twist at the corner of her mouth, and for the first time in a while Dan thinks his life is going _exactly_ where he wants it to go.

He finishes his email and leans back against the couch cushions, grinning to himself. It’s a glorious summer Sunday, his career is ascendant, and he’s got Amy Brookheimer all to himself for the foreseeable future. Things are looking up. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for making it through my first piece of fanfiction in a long, long time. This started out as a drabble and turned into a full-blown missing moment. Dan and Amy and their dynamic just took over. 
> 
> Also, the degree to which Dan considers Amy personally vital to his success is hilarious and obvious.


End file.
